Support: The support is a 1 x 1 plain-weave, processed, linen canvas. The painting was wax lined in 1974, to a 2/1 linen canvas, and attached to the stretcher with tacks and wax adhesive. The stretcher is an expansion bolt type with vertical and horizontal cross braces.

Ground or Support Preparation: The canvas has a commercially applied primer consisting of CaCO3 and BaSO4in oil, characterized using x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy at 15kV, 33 and 40kV and 28.8, 18 and 3.8 μA under full vacuum from the verso.

Design Layers: Despite gloss appearance (due to surface coating) paint application are matte, layer over layer with raised brushwork at edges of color defining forms. Stiff paint ridges are quite visible in the sky areas and in the grey of the foreground.

XRF characterized both the sky and blue hills as containing cobalt blue with some zinc white. The cross is identified as being bone black and the deep green beneath the hills is characterized as viridian green. Graphite line underdrawing is seldom visible at the margins of adjacent forms. There are frequent linear raised ridges of paint at margins of the forms. There is minimal wet-in-wet blending with gradual, stepped transitions in value or hue. The artist has also used subtractive techniques such as wiping, thinning and drybrush-flattening in the execution of the paint texture and translucent values. The wax resin lining process has saturated many of the colors at the high threads of the canvas weave due to wax migration into the thin oil paints.

Surface Coating: Records indicate the painting was varnish by C. Keck in 1949 with polymerized butyl methacrylate. In 1974, when the painting was lined, it was sprayed with Acryloid B-72. Additionally the black cross appears to have had a selectively applied natural resin (dammar, est).

Framing, Backing and Hanging Hardware: Work is installed in a reproduction GOK III “clam shell, metal leaf, environmentally controlled frame with a gasketed secondary backing basswood strainer and gasketed Optium glazing.

The previously lined (wax) painting is generally stable overall. The lining has further saturated and pushed-forward many proud threads and canvas slubs that are in the original canvas. Both mechanical and drying/traction cracks are present. The white ground can often be seen, at certain angles, below the traction cracks. Wider drying cracks are seen in the dark green, exposing lighter green. In general, all these cracks are stable. There are stretcher bar lip cracks around the perimeter of the painting. Horizontal linear branched cracks are present in the black area on the left horizontal cross arm, and near the corner of the top and right cross arms (this crack area is due to old stretcher bar). Additionally, there is a curved branched crack near the corner of the right cross arm and the long lower cross arm. All of these raised cracks also exhibit varnish separation at their margins. There are a few scattered pinpoint paint losses. There are two parallel scrapes in the foreground to the right of center about 1” up from the bottom edge. There is a line of paint bits (from brush application) descending from the lower blue hill on the left, down to the bottom of the hill. Found intermittently along the perimeter are red paint transfers. There are a few scattered insect accretions and a dry surface accretion with associated drips marks located on the right cross arm. Small isolated areas of lifting varnish, which appear as matte areas, can be seen in the lower cross arm.